STORY: "The Hunt for Xavier!, part one: Meltdown" (22 pages)  Pyro goes on a rampage across Nebraska, demanding to see Xavier.  SHIELD call in the X-Men to sort him out.

What you need to know:
Pyro has apparently been working his way east across Nebraska for the last day, which is pretty impressive considering that he's in obviously poor health and is on the run from a killer robot.  At this point, Pyro is still suffering from the Legacy Virus, which explains why his powers are out of control.  What's a little less clear is precisely what he's up to here.  He's asking for Xavier and says that somebody sent him, but beyond that, it's really anybody's guess.

Xavier is on the run with various shadowy figures.  As we'll see next issue, the man in shadow in this issue is the Toad, and Xavier is hanging around with the latest incarnation of the Brotherhood of Mutants.

Gambit is still being haunted by the ghost of Mary Purcell, a subplot which kicked off in X-Men vol 2 #81 and ended up being resolved over in the Gambit solo series.  Consequently, it needn't detain us.  Bachalo has drawn Purcell's spirit as a sort of smoke demon; heaven only knows how far they'd actually worked out the plot at this point.

Pyro is carted away by SHIELD at the end of this story, but they evidently didn't do a good job of holding on to him - when he turns up next, he's back with the Brotherhood.

Moira MacTaggert ships a Cerebro machine over to the X-Men, restoring one more piece of equipment to the Mansion.  At least they bothered to explain this one.  Cerebro points the X-Men to two separate locations for Xavier - San Francisco and Tajikistan.  One of them's the real Xavier and one is Nina, as we'll see in the remainder of this storyline.  Basically, it's a device to justify splitting the team into two groups, one for each of the two X-Men titles, for the remainder of this storyline.  Why is Nina registering as a duplicate Xavier signature?  According to X-Men vol 2 #83, it's because she "somehow imprinted her mind after Charles' template, much as a newborn goose imprints onto the first thing it sees."  (A newborn goose?)

Guest star Nick Fury mentions that he's only just returned to SHIELD after months away.  That refers to a storyline where he was supposed to have been killed by the Punisher.  His death was intended to stick - writing the funeral scene in Incredible Hulk, Peter David went to the trouble of wheeling in Wolverine to authenticate the body - but eventually Marvel changed their minds and the whole thing was written off as yet another robot body double.  Fury finally returned to office in Fury/Agent 13 #2.  All of these convolutions in SHIELD are supposed to provide the plot justification for Fury bringing in the X-Men.

Comments:
"The Hunt for Xavier!" - yes, there's an exclamation mark in the title - is a six-part crossover running through alternating issues of Uncanny X-Men and X-Men, something that was going to become the norm for some time to come.  Basically, we're now going into a phase where to all intents and purposes there is one X-Men comic with two names and numbering systems.  It stays that way up pretty much until the end of the Alan Davis run.

"Hunt for Xavier" is a storyline designed to hit the reset button on one more inconvenient plot point, by getting Xavier back together with the X-Men and disposing of those irritating duplicate X-Men from issue #360.  Presumably the editors had already soured on them.  This first part goes to great lengths to distract attention from the fact that not a great deal really happens.  Most of the issue is spent in a fight with Pyro, with Cerebro hanging around in the background, but it doesn't really lead to anything.  The X-Men had already sent for the spare Cerebro machine and would have looked for Xavier anyway.

Still, when there's nothing going on in the plot, it does at least leave room for Seagle and Bachalo to entertain themselves in the details.  Most of the lengthy action sequence is dominated by Marrow - the only X-Man on the current roster who's never met Xavier - quizzing the others on why she's supposed to be so impressed.  In a nice touch, while most of them eulogise about his genius, the cynical Gambit doesn't buy into it either.  He's all for saving Xavier because he thinks Xavier's a nice guy, but doesn't really think much of his supposed visionary status.

Bachalo entertains himself with fire effects and cute SHIELD technology, and the end result is readable enough.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Colossus, Gambit, Rogue and Storm (all last in Avengers vol 3 #10; all next in X-Men vol 2 #82-84, then in issue #364)
Marrow, Nightcrawler and Shadowcat (all last in Avengers vol 3 #10)
Wolverine (last in Wolverine vol 2 #132)

GUEST STARS
Nick Fury (between X-Man #46 and Alpha Flight vol 2 #20)
SHIELD (continuity unknown)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Professor X (last behind the scenes in X-Men vol 2 #73)
Cecilia Reyes (last in issue #360; next in flashback in issue #389)

VILLAINS
Cerebrite Beta (first appearance)
Pyro (between Quicksilver #9 and Cable #87)
Toad (last in Generation X #19)
Mary Purcell (between X-Men vol 2 #81 and #83)

GUEST APPEARANCES
Moira MacTaggert (behind the scenes between X-Men Unlimited #21 and Gambit vol 3 #2)

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